On the social-pacifist position of the Indian section of the Mandelist “Fourth International” during the latest India-Pakistan conflict

 

By Michael Pröbsting, Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 24 May 2025, www.thecommunists.net

 

 

 

The latest armed conflict between India and Pakistan was the most serious military confrontation between the two states since 1971. [1] It was therefor also a serious test for left-wing parties in these countries. However, as we did show, the reformist left completely capitulated to the reactionary chauvinism of the ruling class which dominated public opinion.

 

In India the two largest parties – the Stalinist CPI and CPI(M) – fully supported the actions of the right-wing Modi government to “punish the terrorists in Pakistan”. The ex-Maoist-reformist CPI(ML) Liberation used more pacifist phrases in their propaganda but effectively took the same position as it did not clearly oppose the actions of the government. None of these parties demands the withdrawal of Indian troops from Kashmir or defends the right of national self-determination of the Kashmiri people! ^[2] It has been left to comparable small revolutionary forces in India to defend the honourable banner of internationalism and anti-chauvinism in such a difficult situation. ^[3]

 

In this article we shall deal with the reaction of a much smaller group – the “Radical Socialist” (RS) which is the Indian section of the Mandelist “Fourth International” – to the latest crisis. It has published two statements on this issue albeit, tellingly, not on their own website – where it is silent about the latest India-Pakistan conflict – but only on that of their international organisation. [4]

 

 

 

“Forgetting” the Kashmiris’ right to national self-determination

 

 

 

To their credit, RS did not join the reformists in welcoming India’s military attacks against Pakistan but rather opposed these. Nevertheless, their two documents demonstrate the political opportunism and cowardice of right-wing centrism in a period of deep crisis and war. Pierre Rousset, a long-time leader of the Mandelist “Fourth International”, claims in an article that “the vast majority of my comrades in the countries concerned have maintained this plumb line against the current and in the face of intense pressure for national unity or militarism, keeping their stand in favour of full recognition of the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination, a primary duty for Pakistani, Indian and... Chinese activists.“ [5]

 

Leaving aside the interesting confession that only the “vast majority” (i.e. not all) of his comrades took an internationalist position, Rousset’s claim is simply not true. None of the two RS documents calls for the right to national self-determination of the Kashmiri people! The second statement, issued on 8 May after the outbreak of the armed conflict, does not go beyond the reformist-liberal phrase: “We hope that ordinary workers and people in both countries will stand on the side of peace and a political resolution of the Kashmir conflict, instead of seeking military solutions.”

 

And the first statement, issued on 24 April after the terror attack in Pahalgam, limits itself to reformist-pacifist nonsense when it comes to the perspectives of Kashmir. “We would like to reiterate that there can be no military solution to political problems. If the Indian state is serious about the return of peace to the Valley they must pay heed to the rights of all citizens of J&K, and to their political aspirations and demands.”

 

This is hardly a statement in defence of the right of the Kashmiri people to decide if they want to separate from India or not and if they want to form an independent state or not. This is all the truer as these not so radical socialists do not call for the immediate withdrawal of the 750,000 Indian soldiers which occupy and brutally repress the people in Kashmir!

 

No, the shameful truth is that the Indian section of the Mandelist “Fourth International” did not dare to call for the right to national self-determination of the Kashmiri people during the recent crisis in which this region was at the centre of the whole conflict and where this right of self-determination is the key to the situation.

 

 

 

Reactionary pacifism

 

 

 

Such political cowardice goes hand in hand with preaching of petty-bourgeois pacifism. As we did discuss somewhere else in more detail, statements that “there can be no military solution” are nothing but a reactionary attack against the idea of armed struggle for national liberation. In fact, the opposite is true: there can be no solution, i.e. no national liberation, without the armed struggle of the workers and oppressed! This has been demonstrated by the experience of numerous anti-colonial struggles in the past 100 years – from Algeria to Korea and from Kenya, Angola to Vietnam. Even India would not have seen an end of British colonial rule without armed uprisings like those in 1942 and 1946 (not to speak about the large insurrection in 1857). ^[6]

 

Of course, the military struggle should not be the only and mostly not even the main form of the liberation struggle. But to imagine that a heavily armed oppressor can be defeated without an armed struggle, is reactionary petty-bourgeois nonsense!

 

Naturally, we are aware that one can always say so publicly for security reasons. But, first, RS didn’t publish its statement on their own website and there is no reason to refrain from publishing a revolutionary approach in an international publication. And, secondly, even if one can not state the full Marxist position in an article for security reasons, there is no excuse for publishing reactionary pacifist positions!

 

In fact, such pacifist statements have a long tradition in the policy of RS. When a young Kashmiri guerilla fighter successfully attacked a military convoy of the Indian army in February 2019, this organisation joined the chorus of chauvinists denouncing this act as “terrorist”. [7] In its statement following the attack, Radical Socialist justified its denunciation by elaborating a peculiar definition of “terrorism”: “Terrorism is not a reference to any category of persons but refers to a particular method, technique or tactic that involves the killing or injuring of innocent civilians or, outside of a battle or war zone, of even soldiers who by virtue of the distinctive nature of the attack are rendered completely defenceless. Precisely because terrorism is an act of this kind it can be and is carried out by the individual, a group, or larger collectivities like the apparatuses of the state. The car bomb attack that has killed 40 CRPF soldiers is just such an act and deserves the strongest condemnation. As in all cases of terrorism our sympathies and condolences are with the loved ones, families, relatives and friends of the victims.” [8]

 

We see, for the Mandelist pacifists, there exists not only “no military solution”, but they also even denounce the armed resistance against the occupation forces!

 

 

 

Advisors of Modi

 

 

 

The Pahalgam terror attack was an act which the RCIT and all authentic Marxists naturally denounced as it was directed against civilians and not against military forces. However, the perspective which RS offered after this terror attack was a thoroughly bourgeois one as it called the Hindutva-chauvinist Modi government to “punish of the perpetrators”. It expressed support for such demands of the bourgeois opposition around the Congress party. “Most opposition parties have rightly demanded punishment of the perpetrators and accountability from all those who are responsible for the security failure.”

 

Furthermore, while warning of repression against the Kashmiri people, it expressed its hope that the government will succeed in its efforts: “We are unsure whether the Indian security apparatus will be able to identify the exact nature of security failure, and all those who are responsible for these acts. We hope it does (!) but we are sadly quite sure that this will be used as an opportunity to target innocent Muslims, and Kashmiris in particular.”

 

In addition, RS called Modi to push the Pakistani government for collaboration in an international investigation (Such an investigation, by the way, has been demanded by Islamabad itself but was refused by Modi.) It advises Modi that in case the Pakistani government refuses to collaborate in such an investigation, it could “put it (Pakistani government, Ed.) in the dock internationally and then justified various actions that could be taken diplomatically and materially (!) by India against the government”.

 

“After the Pahalgam terror act which deserves to be universally and unequivocally condemned, the Modi government should have made public and transparent the information it has as to who the likely perpetrators are and accepted the call for an international investigation in which Indian involvement would be necessary and central and demanded that the Pakistan government participate in uncovering the complete truth so that the culprits can be caught and punished in the name of justice. A Pakistani refusal to cooperate in this manner would have put it in the dock internationally and then justified various actions that could be taken diplomatically and materially (!) by India against the government but not against the welfare of the general Pakistani public. Indeed, the most sensible approach and the one most damaging to the Islamabad government is precisely to drive an ever greater wedge between the Pakistani public and a government that is already deeply unpopular.”

 

Such a strategy of bourgeois diplomacy prepares the road to chauvinist war because it claims that the Modi government would be justified to take actions against Pakistan. Such actions, according to RS, could be both “diplomatically and materially”, i.e. it would include military attacks against “terrorists”.

 

The task of authentic socialists in such a situation was to point to the responsibility of the Modi government respectively of the Indian state for the occupation of Kashmir, to demand the immediate withdrawal of all Indian troops and to call for the right of the Kashmiri people to national self-determination, i.e. to separate from the Indian state. It is under no circumstances permissible for socialists to delegate the task of combatting “terror attacks” to a bourgeois government – in particular not to a state-terrorist regime like that of Modi! ^[9]

 

Instead of calling the Modi government to “punish the terrorists”, Marxists would combine opposition against such terror attacks with pointing to the much bigger crimes of the Indian state which has killed about 100,000 Kashmiris and gang raped nearly 10,000 women since the beginning of a large-scale uprising of the Kashmiri people in 1989.

 

In conclusion, we must say that the response of “Radical Socialist” to the latest Indian-Pakistan conflict is neither radical not socialist. It rather reflects their social-pacifist position, an accommodation to the strong wave of chauvinism in their country.